If we are not getting better, then we are getting worse. Change is constant, but intentional and planned change isn’t. Unlike a mathematical constant, planned change has variables. People resist it most times, even if it’s for a common good and in their best interest. As a leader, desired change is one of the things we must drive. This can be stressful but even more if nothing is done. When the stress of where we are is greater than the stress to change, we move. At that point, planned change will happen.
Change management is an approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organisations to a desired future state. This can be done through a set of identified and conceptualised frameworks, by painting the right picture, engaging stakeholders at different levels. While ensuring you create emotional and mental triggers.
Connect with your subjects first, reach for their hearts before their hands. Absence of a connection with your subjects, lack of a sense of urgency, inability to handle resistance, no buy-in from key people, unmotivated employees and vested interests are factors that make change a drag. Still, some powerful models can be employed to get planned change management right.
Kurt Lewin provided one of the earliest models of planned change. He conceived change as modification of those forces keeping a system’s behaviour stable. Specifically, a particular set of behaviours at any moment in time is the result of two groups of forces: those striving to maintain the status quo and those pushing for change. When both sets of forces are about equal, current behaviours are maintained in what Lewin termed a state of “quasi-stationary equilibrium.” To change that state, one can increase those forces pushing for change, decrease those forces maintaining the current state, or apply some combination of both. As Lewin puts it, “motivation for change must be generated before change can occur.”
According to Lewin, the most effective way to engineer change is to see the system in need of change like an iced block you want to reshape. It must go through the stages: unfreezing, making the change and refreezing. Let’s attempt to break this down.
First you must melt the ice to make it amendable to change (unfreeze). Then you must mould it into the shape you want (change). Finally, you must solidify the new shape (refreeze). So, in other words, there are three stages of change management.
To unfreeze is to open the up the minds of the subject (team) to the need for change and accept it. You have to break them out of the old order. Unfreezing means getting people to gain perspective on their day-to-day activities, unlearn their old ways, limiting beliefs and open up to new ways of reaching their objectives.
Change involves taking up new tasks and responsibilities. It’s the implementing phase. This refers to the to-dos and actually doing it.
Refreeze is making the change permanent. Creating compliance mechanism and making the new order stick.
Beyond methodologies, there is a human factor to getting change management done effectively. It requires making it aspirational through change agents and quality champion people in the organisation or host community. These people are called influencers and champions and come in three categories: mavens, sneezers and connectors.
Mavens are the knowledgeable ones, the thought leaders in the industry or firm. People already respect their minds and knowledge base on the subject matter at hand. (For this, sometimes they have ego and positions.) Sneezers are the ones that can make the message go viral, even the change. They are the “notice boards’’ and town criers of the firm. Better put, they are like blogs and re-tweets in the organisation. Connectors know everyone. They have great relationships with others. When they talk people connect. They get around and are nice with it.
Mavens, sneezers and connectors are the people you need to have on your side when pioneering change. In change management, building trust is also paramount. An organisation is change-ready when three conditions prevail: leaders and the champions of the change are respected; people feel personally motivated to change and there is collaboration and collective ownership of the need and journey to that change.
It’s important start at the top. The leaders must embrace the new approaches first, both to challenge and to motivate the rest of the institution. They must speak with one voice and model the desired behaviours through the quality champions and influencers of each unit of the organisation where the change is to be implemented. From there, we can push decision-making down to the lowest level. Firms should share information freely. They should make communication a two-way street; talk but also listen.
Engagements on a personal level are important. To drive change, reach for the heart of your subjects first, carrying along key people as a focus group, winning them over first. Great leaders may not always be right with the change they desire but they deliver it regardless. Their trick is simple, they go on a voyage with their cause, engaging and connecting first with the people. In the words of John Maxwell, “reach for their hearts before you reach for their hands.”
Another key concept is crafting a compelling message that summarises the desired change. A few years ago, I touched down the island of NLNG Bonny to play golf. On arrival, I noticed that all over the island, the boats, lounges, and offices had this slogan, “Do you know what time it is?” It made me curious. I thought it was the golf game; maybe it was sponsored by a watch production company like is usually the case. But it wasn’t.
During dinner, I asked the chef why they had the slogan written all over their walls and he said, “It means you should always watch the time, be conscious of it.” Now that’s an effective campaign for time management. That day, we went ahead to have an interesting conversation around managing time. I left the island realising that successful people first learn to manage time, even before money. I learnt how not just be a time manager, but a priority manager. I learnt the difference between urgent and important. Urgent doesn’t mean important, important doesn’t mean urgent. I aligned with that campaign because it was an enjoyable ride. People spoke about it and almost everyone I met at Bonny seemed to be a champion of the cause. They volunteered to have people waste less time at every touch point on the island.
Change management and organisational transformation begins as an inside job. Like I always love to illustrate: when an egg is broken from the outside, life ends. But when it is broken from the inside, life begins.
Begin the breakthrough to your change management process from the inside out. I look forward to being a part of your success story.
EIZU UWAOMA
